Shoots and Sparks
by Alphabet Pie
Summary: Sequel to Problematic. Marluxia adjusts to life on the outside, sometimes with more success than others. 411, Larxnam. Some nondescript lemon in later chapters.
1. FIRST

_The first night was beautiful._

"This is your room," Vexen had said, opening the door into a pastel painted, square room with French windows and a balcony overlooking the garden and the rest of the city. On the left was the bed, on the right a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a frankly gigantic bean bag chair. The carpet was soft underneath his feet and he pulled the older man in to collapse onto the blissfully soft mattress, laughing as deeply as the kisses he generously gave to Vexen.  
"Can't I stay with you?" He'd asked in the evening at bedtime, tugging impertinently at his sleeves, thrusting out his bottom lip in a manner most people considered to be adorable. For a serial murderer, he was good at adorable.  
"I'm sorry," Vexen had apologised as he'd tucked him up in bed. "I'm legally obliged to have you locked in at night."  
He'd shrugged.  
"Fair enough."

But the lock was delightfully easy to pick, the creaky floorboards simple to avoid, Vexen's door handle as silent as the night itself and it was with the utmost care that he pressed their bodies together under the duvet, digging under Vexen's pale, slender body to pull him close.  
"Marluxia?"  
"Mm-hm."  
"What are you doing here?"  
"I was lonely."  
He heard Vexen sigh in the darkness and squeezed him tighter, nipping gently at the bare skin of his shoulder blade.  
"Oh, stop that."  
He petulantly swept his tongue up to the base of Vexen's neck, burying himself in soft, blonde hair. He'd have stopped there, but then there was such a delicious looking ear right by his mouth and he couldn't resist the temptation to envelope his lips around it, tugging ever-so-slightly. He liked being gentle with Vexen. Anybody could break shit, he'd come to realise - but it took real skill to teeter on the edge, to push the limits of what you could and couldn't do without ever quite crossing the line.  
Vexen let out a whisper of a sigh, reaching up to pull him over his shoulder to face him.  
"Kiss me where I can kiss back, at least,"  
Gently, so gently, he gripped Vexen's shoulders and guided his body over him, craning his neck to find those thin, delectable lips, to flash the barest hint of a tongue, to wrap his arms around Vexen's neck and draw him in closer still. Nothing with any great force. Gentle.  
He wasn't sure if Vexen realised, or understood, but to be careful with him was proof of how much he'd changed. He'd come to realise that everything was a compromise - and more importantly, come to enjoy the challenge of bending - but not quite breaking - the rules.  
"I suppose I'll let this slide, just this once," Vexen murmured sardonically against his lips and suddenly Marluxia smiled, suddenly Marluxia felt his heart swell so much that it _hurt_, and suddenly Marluxia couldn't believe that he'd ever even doubted that he was helplessly, hopelessly, drunkenly and wonderfully in love with Vexen.

_The first night was bliss._

---

_The first morning was cold._

Even with Vexen shielding him Marluxia wasn't safe from the nightmares, and fire and blood engulfed his sleep and once he was done screaming he was soaked in cold sweat, eyes streaming with tears, glued to Vexen's body and shaking helplessly. Vexen had an arm around his shoulders, fingers of the other gently running through his hair, murmuring comforting words in his ear. He felt cold, so cold.  
Eventually he managed to prise his stiff fingers from Vexen's back, gawk, horrified, at the welts he'd left there in his nightmare world, and be carried into the bathroom, sat on a stool as warm water poured from the taps, and then stripped and lowered into the bubbles.  
He couldn't remember the last time he'd had the luxury of enjoying a bath and he took nothing for granted, not the heat rising from the water, soothing his mind, not the gentle hands tangling shampoo in his hair, not the soft kiss that made him melt, completely.

_The first morning was also warm._

---

_The first day was new, and old. _

Marluxia had followed Vexen around his daily routine for two, perhaps three months, acclimatising to the life of a normal young man. He learned to cook - badly. He learned the washing machine, and the sink and the dish brush, he learned the vacuum cleaner. He learned good manners in shops as he took items to the check out, and he learned being quiet in the library as Vexen picked out all manner of books for each other to read.  
He even learned the wonderful feeling of achievement as one day Vexen arrived home with a brown envelope and he opened it up to discover a good, solid C in black and white on the page inside. Vexen had told him that the national average grade was a C, and suddenly he realised that he wasn't the worst of the worst at everything any more. In one respect, at least, he was as good as everybody else. He was slowly becoming normal.  
He learned to like normal. Normal was a bit of a thrill, a bit of a privilege, and Marluxia made very sure to learn it well.

Finally there was only one thing left to learn, and that was school. Marluxia never admitted it to Vexen but, deep down inside, the prospect - Vexen first brought it up one night at the dinner table - scared him. School was where it had all gone wrong the first time. School was memories of manipulation, bullying and sadism.  
But there wasn't very much where Marluxia could go with one GCSE in Botany, so further education was the only place for him. Vexen was supporting him, even taking him down to the local college to see him off on the first day, a month or so after that.  
When Marluxia finally found the right room - the bleached walls and long corridors reminded him too much of prison, but thank God the classroom was brightly coloured with work patched all over the walls - he felt like an outsider. Everybody stared disinterestedly at him and he took a place at the back, alone. For all the things that he'd learned he still didn't know interaction with other people his age. The only person he ever talked to for more than a few minutes was Vexen. But he held tight and quietly obeyed the teacher's instructions until he had produced a whole page of child-scrawl notes that even he couldn't read. That day he made a mental note to learn good handwriting, as well.

_The first day was alien._

---

_The first friend was a real cornerstone._

He'd decided to learn packed lunches over school dinners because it gave him an excuse to throw food at Vexen in the morning, and as the days lightened into summer he found himself outside more often than not on his lunch breaks. He'd always been alone and that didn't really trouble him because, waiting back at home, he had Vexen.  
Her name was Larxene and she was a bit of a tomboy, studying electronics and engineering a few flights of stairs below him, and she didn't really have any friends either.  
"Hey. Can I sit here?"  
Marluxia, having learned politeness well, dutifully stood up, even if there was a whole field of grass in which the girl could have chosen a place to sit instead of his.  
"Sure."  
He made as to leave as she sat down in the grass, and she giggled at him.  
"By here I meant next to you."  
"Oh."  
And he sat down again.  
"New?"  
"What is?"  
"You. Are you new around here?"  
"Oh. Yeah. I started about a couple of months ago. I do botany and business studies."  
She nodded approvingly.  
"I'm in engineering, and electronics. I think my mum would have preferred that I did something girly like textiles, but you know."  
"I do?" Marluxia asked, a little confused. He didn't even understand half of what she was saying, but he didn't want to call her up on it in case she thought he was stupid.  
"Figure of speech."  
Marluxia didn't really know what that was, either, but he nodded.  
"Right."  
"So what's your name?"  
"Me? I'm Marluxia."  
"That's cute. Kinda suits you. Are you gay?"  
Marluxia, who had only ever heard the term as an insult, frowned and shook his head.  
"Got a lot of guts to go around with pink hair, then," The girl commented. "But don't get any ideas, okay? I'm a lesbian."  
Marluxia didn't know what that was either, but he pegged it in his mind to ask Vexen later. He felt a little bad. He was completely and utterly lost in the conversation. He hardly knew anything.  
"So what's your name?"  
"Larxene."  
"That sounds kind of... sparky." He replied thoughtfully. Larxene laughed.  
"I like that. Shoots and sparks."  
"Shoots?"  
"Yeah. Your name sounds like a flower."  
Marluxia had laughed too then.  
"I like flowers."

_The first friend was really, really special._


	2. SECOND

Vexen was late home that night. Dusk had already fallen and the street lamps were burning in the evening drizzle as Marluxia patiently waited by the window. He didn't really know what Vexen did - presumably more shady contracts and commissions - and nor did he honestly care. Just as long as he was there in the morning and there to hold him close at night.  
He still had nightmares, but not so much any more.  
Eventually, a familiar car rolled into the drive, three floors below, and Marluxia took to a run, out of the front door of their apartment, down the stairs and into the lobby just in time to tackle Vexen as he walked in.  
"You're late," He said accusingly.  
"Vexen chuckled a little, ruffling Marluxia's hair.  
"You need to get this cut."  
Marluxia didn't like getting his hair cut, and as it was it hung messily around his shoulders and in his eyes, like a mane.  
"Why are you late?" He pressed as they ascended the stairs. Marluxia didn't like lifts, either. Too claustrophobic.  
"There was an outbreak of violence at the prison."  
"I'll kill any bastard who thinks they can hurt you," Marluxia said pleasantly as he dragged Vexen in through the door. "I met somebody today."  
"Did you now?" Vexen asked, prising himself away to boil the kettle.  
"I did." Marluxia replied as he took a seat. "Her name's Larxene and she's a lesbian."  
Vexen nodded half-approvingly.  
"But I don't know what a lesbian is," Marluxia admitted. "And she asked if I was gay and I said no but I don't think she meant it in a mean way, and she said a lot of other things that I didn't understand."  
Vexen patiently explained.  
"Oh. But I don't like other men. I just like you."  
"I am another man."  
"I suppose so."  
"So is she in any of your classes?"  
"No, she just sat with me at lunch. She lives down by the park."  
"That's not too far away," Vexen commented as Marluxia draped himself lovingly over his back, bored of the chair.  
"Yeah. I'd have said that we could walk home together but I wanted to check with you first."  
"I don't see any problem with that," Vexen said, pouring tea for them both.  
"Thanks. How was your day?"  
"I was threatened with a gun."  
Marluxia's smile faded instantly.  
"Fucking-"  
"Nothing became of it," Vexen quickly interrupted. "I managed to calm her down."  
"Still. She can't threaten _you_."  
"You threw a knife at my head, once," Vexen replied smoothly. Marluxia bit his lip a little, apologetically squeezing his arms around Vexen's shoulders.  
"I wouldn't do that now."  
"I know."  
"Can I have a hug?"  
"Of course."  
Vexen twisted his body around until he was facing the younger man, and he leaned down and kissed him, deeply. Marluxia enjoyed every second of the close proximity as he pushed Vexen back against the counter, murmuring nonsense against his lips.  
so gently, Vexen picked him up to plonk him down on the kitchen table, pulling away.  
"Tea."  
Marluxia took it gratefully - no sugar, a little cream to sweeten the bitter taste - and sipped, eyes trained on Vexen. Just watching him glide effortlessly about the small, immaculate kitchen was enough to make his heart almost burst from happiness and pride. Vexen was gorgeous, and Vexen was _his_.

---

Larxene was already on the field when Marluxia came over at lunch time.  
"Can I sit here?"  
She laughed goodnaturedly at him.  
"Sure."  
He sat down next to her and pulled out his lunch box. Today there was grated cheese in his sandwich, but not much of it because he'd aimed most of it at Vexen's mouth before school, and missed.  
"How are you today? A little less oblivious?"  
Marluxia chuckled, picking a daisy from the grass and twirling it in his fingers as he ate.  
"Yeah, a little,"  
"Well, if I ever start using words that are too long for you, just say,"  
"I'm not stupid," Marluxia huffed. "I just don't know much."  
"Your parents never teach you nothing?"  
Suddenly Marluxia had lost his appetite and he set his half eaten sandwich down.  
"I haven't seen any of my family since I was eleven."  
Larxene looked horrified.  
"Oh my God, why not?"  
Marluxia hung his head limply, picking at the daisy to pieces before discarding it. _He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me..._  
"I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to tell you."  
"Fair enough," Larxene said, sympathetically patting his shoulder. "Who do you live with, then?"  
"Vexen."  
"Vexen?"  
"Yeah. He used to be my psychiatrist. Now he's just mine."  
"You really did have a troubled childhood, didn't you," Larxene mused. "And I thought you said you weren't gay?"  
"I wasn't the one who was troubled by it," Marluxia admitted quietly. "And yesterday I didn't know what you meant."  
"You do know what a lesbian is then, right?"  
"Yeah. I asked Vexen."  
"Heh. You're cute."  
"Thanks...?"  
Larxene just laughed, pushing his shoulder and grabbing his sandwich, waving it at him until he took it and continued to eat.  
"So what about you? Who do you live with?"  
"Mum, dad, three brothers and a girlfriend, aunt and uncle, two cousins, a batty Grandma and my pet dog."  
"Wow." Marluxia said. "That must be cramped."  
"We have a big house."  
"Vexen and I live in a little apartment just off the high street," Marluxia replied, impressed. "But there's only the two of us so it doesn't need to be very big."  
"Yeah, we'd be dead in there," Larxene giggled.  
"How many people have you got, anyway?" Marluxia asked, unable to count himself.  
"Twelve," Larxene boasted proudly. "Soon to be thirteen. My big brother's girlfriend is preggers."  
"Preggers? What's that?"  
"Pregnant. Baby's coming in a few months. Everybody's so excited. Except me. I hate babies."  
"I hate babies too," Marluxia agreed, not because he did but because ne wanted to be the same as Larxene. Nobody ever really talked to him so now that she was he wanted to keep it that way.  
"Finally, somebody agrees with me," Larxene said. "They're so annoying."  
Marluxia thought that babies were supposed to be cute, but he nodded anyway.  
"Yeah."  
"So what kinda stuff do you like?"  
"I don't know," Marluxia admitted. "I like nature, I suppose. I went to a reserve once, back when I was- a while ago. We walked and I drew pictures of all the plants. That was one of my favourite days."  
Larxene laughed.  
"You're a weird guy. What were your other favourite days, then?"  
Marluxia considered this for some time. _The day I tried - and failed - to rape Vexen_ didn't sound quite right in his head.  
"Well, that was the first one. The second day was when I first kissed Vexen, and the third was the day I told him I loved him."  
"That's so sweet," Larxene murmured. _If only she knew_, Marluxia thought.  
"You really think so?"  
"Yeah."  
Marluxia hadn't been called sweet since before he was eleven, when everybody thought he was an angel, and anyone who knew the truth was too scared to admit it. Weird, he thought. Scared of a boy with less than a dozen years to his name.  
"So what about you?" He asked. "What were your favourite days?"  
Larxene shrugged.  
"I dunno. The day I came out to my parents, I guess, was one of them."  
"Came out? Where?" Marluxia interrupted, confused. But Larxene had promised that she'd explain anything he didn't understand.  
"You know. As a lesbian."  
"Oh, right. Carry on."  
"Yeah, well, I'd been so worried about telling them for so long and eventually I told myself that enough was enough and I had to come clear to my family. So that evening I told them and I was so scared that I'd get kicked out or something-"  
"Your parents would kick you out?" Marluxia interrupted again, this time horrified. Sure, his parents had left him, but that was because he was a monster. Why would anybody who just happened to like people the same sex as them deserve the same thing?  
"Well, you know, a lot of people are homophobic even now."  
"I'm confused again."  
"Scared of gays and lesbians. They think it's wrong."  
"Oh. That's stupid. Wrong is like killing people and stuff, not being gay."  
"Yeah, well..." Larxene trailed off.  
"Carry on," Marluxia urged again apologetically.  
"Oh yeah, so I was really scared, but then once I'd finished my mum gave me a big hug and told me she was so proud of me for being so honest. She was totally okay with it, and so was my dad. She woke up everybody else just to tell them. I've never been so relieved in my life."  
Marluxia laughed, the grin on his face one of almost ironic childish innocence.  
"That's really sweet too."  
Larxene giggled with him.  
"Yeah. I guess so,"  
The bell rang for the end of lunch and Larxene gathered up her bag, standing.  
"Catch you later, Marly,"  
"Yeah. Um... do you wanna walk home to the park with me after college?" Marluxia quickly asked before Larxene could jog away. "I asked Vexen and he said he didn't mind me taking a bit of a detour home,"  
Larxene nodded.  
"Sure. Meet me here, yeah?"  
"Yeah. I'll see you then."

---

Osmosis, wrote Marluxia. Osmosis is a special type of- _of... damn it, I forgot again._  
It had been decided by the people who decide these things and quite possibly no small amount of persuasion by Vexen that Marluxia should also do a course in each of Maths, English and Science, since with four years of secondary education missing he was struggling somewhat in keeping up with his other classes. For these he was tuitioned, largely, on a one-to-one basis, and whether this was normal or not Marluxia didn't really know, but all the same he carefully wrote out his scientific equations and circle theorems and poetic analysis as he recalled deep into his memory all those things he'd half-learned in prison classes in between figuring out ways to kill the teacher with nought but a pencil and an exercise book.  
Today was Science and all the functions of cells were swimming in Marluxia's brain and not really taking the bait and diving on down out of his pencil onto the paper. He wondered if Larxene knew all these things. She probably did. She seemed very intelligent.  
The teacher was somewhere - half of his lessons were simply writing out questions from a book - and he quickly grew bored, doodling flowers in the corner of his paper. This was an Anthericum Liliago, this one here was a Convolvulus Arvensis and this pretty one in the left hand corner was the Lantana Camara.  
Then he drew a child-sketch Vexen which he labelled since it looked more like a four-armed stick man, and added himself with his fluffy mane that ended up looking like an explosion, so he had to label that, too. As an afterthought he popped in a Larxene as well, until there were the three of them there holding hands in a field of flowers twice the height that they were.  
Marluxia felt very young. And then, looking at his Vexen and Larxene, he felt very lonely in the empty room. And then he felt scared.  
And then he climbed under the desk and shivered a bit. But that just made him feel more claustrophobic so then, forgetting that this room's door opened inwards, tried to push it to get out.  
Panicked and scared, he ran backwards and forwards from the locked window to the apparently locked door and when something clicked outside he screamed and hid under the desk again. He was stuck and alone and what if they were coming for him again? He'd lose Vexen and he'd lose Larxene and he'd lose all kinds of bits and pieces that he'd collected over the past six months and he didn't want to go to jail and he didn't want to be locked up didn't want to be locked up didn't want didn't want didn't didn't didn't-

When he came around he was huddled in a chair in the corridor with a few members of staff and a few confused students crowded around him, all with concerned looks on their faces. For several minutes all he could do was blink blankly at them all. His throat felt hoarse; had he really been screaming that much? He couldn't really recall anything.  
"Vexen," He finally croaked out, even his clothes feeling uncomfortably tight against his sweat-soaked skin as he wriggled restlessly.  
"He's on his way," One of the teachers, a young woman with a bow in her hair, promised as another shooed the gaping students away. He nodded a little, unwrapping his hands from his chest and inspecting them closely. Encouragingly, there was no blood.  
"I didn't do anything bad, did I?" He asked after clearing his throat a few times. The teacher shook her head, gently reaching up to stroke his shoulder.  
"Are you feeling better now?"  
"I want a drink," Marluxia said, and, quickly remembering his manners, tagged on a "Please."  
Again the teacher - he couldn't remember her name in his muddled state. Miss Gain... Gainsbury? Gainsborough? - nodded, and stood, leaving him with another teacher, a tall blonde male. Mr... Strife, was it?  
The woman returned with a glass from the canteen and he sipped it distractedly until Vexen, arguing with somebody again, bustled in and instantly clutched him into a tight embrace.  
"Are you okay?"  
"I am now," Marluxia replied affectionately, burying his nose in the fur lining of Vexen's jacket. It smelled of him, a mixture of clean freshness and musky old, and Marluxia loved it.  
Vexen smiled softly, patting Marluxia's back and steering him towards the door.  
"Come on. Let's go home,"  
"But I promised Larxene that I'd walk home with her today,"  
Vexen reached up to gently caress Marluxia's cheek with his thumb.  
"I don't think you should stay here."  
"I promised," Marluxia insisted.  
"Do you know what class she's in?"  
"She does engineering and electronics," Marluxia dutifully replied. "But I don't know what lesson she's in right now,"  
"We can send her a note," The woman teacher said.  
"What if she worries?"  
"We can give her our number and she can call you after school," Vexen suggested, and that seemed like a good idea, so Marluxia nodded.  
"Okay."  
Vexen wrote a note for the teacher in his neat scrawl, signed it, and took Marluxia out to the car park and bundled him in the car.  
"Can we have sex when we get home?"  
"I think you should be doing homework."  
"Well, I'll be a naughty student and you can be my naughty teacher."  
"Don't tempt me, Marluxia."  
"Aha! So you're tempted!"  
"... Please don't grope me when I'm driving."  
"Sorry."


	3. THIRD

"Hng, _Vexen_. Ah-! _Yes_, just... just _there_- oh, fuck, why does somebody _always_ have to call right when we are in the middle of-"  
"It's for you."  
Marluxia huffed a little, wriggling in the bedsheets and reaching up to take the little handset.  
"Yeah?"  
"Marluxia? Are you okay? What happened?"  
It was Larxene. She sounded worried.  
"I'm fine," Marluxia replied, quickly forcing his irritation at being interrupted down. "I just had a bit of a problem at school is all. Vexen took me home and I'm okay now."  
"Alright," Larxene said from the other end of the phone. "But... are you sure you're okay? People said that they heard screaming..."  
Marluxia cast a furtive glance at Vexen, unsure what to say.  
"Uh... I'll explain to you later. Maybe, one day."  
"So it was you who was screaming?"  
"... Yeah."  
"Okay," Larxene said quietly, then coughed. "Okay, just as long as you're feeling better now. You had me really worried."  
_Worried_, Marluxia thought. _Nobody except Vexen's ever been worried about me before._  
"I'm fine," He clarified again, and then quickly added. "Thanks. For worrying, I mean."  
Larxene chuckled.  
"Any time."  
"Any time to do what?"  
At the receiver, Larxene giggled.  
"Oh, God, Marluxia, you are cute sometimes. If stupid. Any time is just an acknowledgement of your thanks. You know, like no problem and stuff."  
"Oh right,"  
Marluxia had never before said thank you enough to know this, so he quickly mentally tagged it for future reference.  
"So what are you doing?"  
"I'm having sex with Vexen," Marluxia replied honestly.  
"What, _now_?"  
"Well, until you interrupted us, yes."  
"Eek. Sorry. I shan't hold you any longer."  
"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."  
"Yeah."  
Marluxia chucked the phone somewhere and returned to Vexen.

---

"Hey! Marluxia!"  
Marluxia had been scurrying to his next lesson when he heard his name being called, so he stopped and turned around.  
"Hey Larxene."  
"You alright?"  
"Yeah. I am now."  
Larxene laughed, momentarily resting her hands on her knees to catch her breath.  
"Where you gotta be?"  
"Huh? Oh, I have English next. I'm doing my exam next week so I need to get as much revision done as possible."  
"I didn't think you were doing English," Larxene said. Marluxia waved his hand.  
"It's catch-up. I didn't really get much education done when I was in prison."  
There was a long pause, and suddenly Marluxia remembered that Larxene wasn't supposed to _know_. Horror filled him; what if she started treating him like the others? What if he lost her? What if she left? What if she-  
He didn't even notice that his breath had hitched as it bordered on hyperventilation, his hands clenched tight into fists, until Larxene was shaking him and his back crashed against the corridor wall.  
"Marluxia? Marluxia!"  
He let out a sob, and slid helplessly to the floor. Larxene came down with him, pulling his shoulders into her chest.  
"Hey, Marluxia. Are you okay?"  
"Don't leave me," He managed, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. "Fuck, Larxene, don't leave. Please..."  
"I won't," Larxene promised. "I just didn't realise that you'd... you know. Been in jail."  
She let go of him and sat down beside him.  
"I don't really care," She said after a moment. The students who had been staring considered the situation boring and were filtering away. "You know, whatever happened in the past. I don't think it should really matter, should it?"  
Marluxia looked at her in surprise.  
"R-really?"  
"Yeah, sure. Obviously you're not like that now, are you?"  
"I like to think I'm not," Marluxia admitted. Of course, some of the things he'd done horrified him even now, but he of all people knew that you couldn't fix a person in just three months, no matter how good a psychiatrist you were. The murderer was still inside him and he knew that. It was just a question of suppressing it until he forgot it was there entirely.  
"So, what'd you get?" Larxene asked. Marluxia shrugged, looking down. Larxene was his friend, right? So she deserved to know.  
"It was an indeterminate sentence," He said. "But I ended up doing seven years in the end. I got out six months ago."  
"Woah." Larxene said quietly. "That's... a long time..."  
"That's why I don't know very much," Marluxia replied. "Because I've spent most of my teens in a cell."  
Larxene whistled, leaning back against the wall.  
"Still, you're out now, right?"  
"I'm always scared that it's only temporary," Marluxia replied reproachfully. "That's... that's why I scream sometimes. Because I think that they're going to take me away from Vexen again."  
"You really do love him, don't you?" Larxene murmured almost jealously. Marluxia nodded.  
"More than anything."  
"Wish I had someone like that,"  
Marluxia was a little surprised; he'd sort of assumed that everybody had a special person that they cared for more than everybody else. That was what parents were, wasn't it? Two special people who had found each other...  
"I'm sure there's a special person out there, waiting for you to come along," He said sincerely, not really realising how cliché that sounded, and a little put out when Larxene laughed.  
"Maybe. Come on, you need to go to class."  
"Oh, yeah. Right."  
"I'm gonna be working through lunch. Wanna walk home after school?"  
"Sure."

---

Marluxia waited patiently for five minutes on the lawn where he and Larxene sat until she stumbled out, laughing at some red-haired boy who seemed more interested in some tiny blonde kid, and jogged over.  
"Hey there. Sorry I'm late. Axel decided to blow up our circuit in electronics."  
"Axel?" Marluxia echoed. "The red haired one?"  
"Yeah. He's a cock. Ignore him."  
"Oh. Okay."  
Larxene laughed again at Marluxia's awkward innocence as they set off down to the park.  
"So. You ever have any friends on the inside?"  
"Not really. I was a bit of a loner. Everybody got scared of me after a while. And then they moved me to high security and I didn't really see much of anybody after that."  
Larxene gave Marluxia a worried look.  
"Are you... being sarcastic?"  
Marluxia shook his head.  
"I have changed," He promised. "I just used to be kinda... violent. Can we talk about something else?"  
"Funny, I couldn't imagine you hurting a fly, let alone anybody else. But, sure. What else is there to talk about?"  
"There's you," Marluxia replied. "What're you like?"  
"Me?" Larxene said as she jumped up onto a wall to walk high above Marluxia. Not to be beaten, he quickly found a foothold, and joined her. "I guess I'm just your average bitch."  
"You don't seem like a bitch to me," Marluxia, who knew what he was talking about when he came to bitches - prisons were rife with them, whether it was convicts or staff - said.  
"That's 'cause I like you."  
"I suppose."  
"But anyway, I love chocolate and steak - but not together, that would be weird - and running in the mornings and wearing boys' clothes."  
"I like wearing boys' clothes too," Marluxia said, and for a moment they both giggled until the wall came to a steep ascent - which Larxene scaled with ease, and Marluxia only needed a little assistance for the last few steps - and they were walking on the perimeter of the park. Larxene climbed onto an overhanging tree, and scrambled down. Marluxia just jumped straight from the wall with a grin.  
"Show-off."  
He stuck his tongue out and made her laugh. Marluxia liked Larxene's laugh, he realised. It was so light, and carefree, like a bird that couldn't ever be caged.  
"Larxene?"  
"Uh huh."  
"We... we're friends, right?"  
"Sure," Larxene replied, tugging at Marluxia's elbow to the bridge over the pond, fishing out her lunch box and emptying the breadcrumbs over the bridge to be snapped up by the hungry ducks and geese. "Why do you ask?"  
"I just wondered," Marluxia replied, stuffing his hands deep into his pockets as he watched a moor hen and a pair of chicks hurry over to the mayhem in the hopes of free food.  
"If you say so." Larxene replied lightly, moving on. "So this is where we say goodbye, right?"  
"Oh. Yeah. See you tomorrow?"  
"Of course!"  
And then Larxene was jogging away towards one of the park exits, occasionally turning back to wave. Marluxia waited on the bridge until she had disappeared out of sight, and then walked home.

---

It hardly took a month for Larxene and Marluxia to grow close enough to be inseparable. After a week or so of walking home together Marluxia was invited to meet Larxene's family and then forced to memorise all the names of her siblings, parents and extended relatives, and soon they were out at weekends watching movies, shopping, throwing food at ducks in the park and generally fooling around as teenagers are wont to do.  
Marluxia enjoyed every second of it. It was like nothing he'd ever really experienced before, just having fun and doing whatever, whenever. Curling up on the sofa watching Vexen's old DVD's, chatting about everything and anything on Marluxia's bed (the one he never slept in because he always slept with Vexen)...  
"What's it like?" Larxene would ask on one occasion, waving her hand.  
"What's what like?"  
"You know. Sex."  
Marluxia would shrug. Marluxia shrugged a lot, either because he didn't know or because he was thinking.  
"Well, it depends on who it's with, I suppose. If it's with somebody you don't really care about, then it's not that good. I mean, like, it's sex, but... it isn't really anything else. Like eating cheap cake."  
Larxene would laugh. She laughed a lot, either because Marluxia had made a joke, or was being inadvertently innocent again.  
"But when it's with someone you love, like, really _really_ love, then it's like... it's like the cake, but it's not just any cake. It's the most amazing cake ever, and has whipped cream and three types of chocolate sprinkles and strawberries on top and it makes you just want to go down on your knees and thank God that such a wonderful cake exists."  
"And have you ever had sex with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles and strawberries on top?"  
Marluxia would colour a little at that point.  
"Only once."  
"I mean, what's it like, not just how good it is," Larxene would clarify. This would take a significant amount more thought from Marluxia.  
"Well," He would begin again, "It's like... it's like coming together with that person and being really close to them because you love them and they love you, and you get this beautiful feeling inside because you know that it just feels so... _right_. Larky, when you meet the right girl, and you're in bed with her, you'll _know_. You'll know that she's the one. It's amazing."  
And because they were so close they _could_ talk about stuff like that, and it was okay to ask why exactly Marluxia had had sex with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles and strawberries on top ("We were making a cake, but then I got whipped cream all over Vexen and then we got distracted."), and it wasn't long before Marluxia tentatively wrote, evening of the 13th of February, _To my best friend, Larxene,_ and when Larxene told him about Naminé, he forgave her because that was exactly what they were.


	4. FOURTH

It was raining.  
It was raining and Larxene was miserable. There was some sort of commotion going on downstairs - when was there _not_ in this madhouse? Kairi, no doubt, was in the centre of it, laughing her innocent laugh as she sat by having her pot-belly rubbed by her loving boyfriend Sora, and all sorts of friends and relatives. The baby was kicking now, apparently, soon to add yet another screaming mouth to be fed in the family.  
That wasn't why Larxene was miserable; she'd long since become accustomed to the manic hustle-and-bustle of her extended family. It was something else entirely, something that had eaten away at her so much that even _Marluxia_ had noticed.  
She'd been staring at the rain pattering on the roof for five minutes, perhaps, before she turned back to the computer screen where a bundle of messages, each more frantic than the last, were stacked up. _Larxene? Larxene, you there? Larxene, come on, I have to go in ten minutes..._  
She sighed heavily, and tapped a reply before glancing up at the top of the chat screen, and the name emblazoned on the uppermost bar.  
_Naminé Traverson._  
She fought back an unpleasant curl to her stomach, because it wasn't just any Naminé Traverson that she was chatting to, it was _that_ Naminé Traverson, little sister of Marluxia, back before his surname was Carlisle. And sooner or later, one of them was going to have to know that Larxene knew both of them.  
She was meeting Marluxia today at his apartment. But she knew that Marluxia didn't react well to things like that - and Vexen was also out today, and the last thing she wanted was for Marluxia to get miserable when he was all alone in his apartment.  
Over the months, she'd become accustomed to Marluxia's fits of fear; he had them less now than he used to, but there were still certain situations that would send alarm bells in her mind ringing - when they were together and somebody would say something bad, or when Marluxia was alone and unhappy. So as much as she just wanted to curl up in bed with her laptop and Naminé's company, she promised herself that she would meet Marluxia.  
It was only ten minutes or so's walk to Marluxia's place and although in that time Larxene's feet had become sodden, the walk wasn't so unpleasant and the look on Marluxia's face - pure, unadulterated glee at finally having company - was worth the walk by far. Larxene felt so sorry for him, bumbling around in a life that he didn't quite understand, so desperately trying to make up for the mistakes his previous life had borne. Marluxia had told her, eventually, about the girl on the roof, and the fire, and although she'd been horrified she understood, and she promised him that she'd never leave, no matter what happened. She was surprised when such a commitment slipped from her lips (she was never one for anything of the sort) but it made perfect sense to both of them, and so that was that.  
They chatted amiably enough as Marluxia flung a towel at her head, introduced her to two new spider-plant babies that he'd given individual pots to last night (he had quite an impressive collection now), and shoved her onto the bed, laughing. But one epic pillowfight later, Marluxia was frowning.  
"You're still wrong," He said accusingly as Larxene made herself comfortable in the bedding piled onto the spare mattress.  
She swallowed thickly.  
Marluxia deserved to know. Right?  
"I... I've met somebody. On the internet."  
Marluxia's expression turned to one of innocent curiosity.  
"Don't tell me it's a paedophile?"  
Larxene shook her head, bit her lip and replied;  
"No. It's your sister."

_No, it's your sister_.  
Marluxia couldn't quite believe what he had just heard, and for several minutes, it seemed, he couldn't quite summon any words, either.  
"Na-Naminé?"  
Larxene nodded guiltily.  
"I didn't realise," She said apologetically, "I mean, I didn't realise that it was-"  
"_My_ Naminé?"  
"Y... yeah."  
Marluxia toyed with his lip between his teeth until it was raw, furiously blinking back tears.  
"Does she know about me?" He finally whispered.  
"No," Larxene replied truthfully. "I haven't told her yet."  
Horror flared in Marluxia's stomach.  
"Yet?" He asked incredulously. "You were going to tell her?"  
"Well, it wouldn't really be fair not to, would it?" Larxene replied quietly.  
Marluxia shook his head, curling in on himself.  
"You can't tell her," He mumbled. "You can't... not _her_. She... she'll never forgive me. _You can't let her know_."  
"Don't you think she deserves to know where you are?" Larxene said, reaching out to touch Marluxia. He froze like a deer in headlights and she quickly dropped her hand. "Don't you think she deserves to know that you got better? You're her _brother_, Marlu-"  
"I'm not any more!" Marluxia replied harshly. "I _failed_ her, Larxene. I don't _deserve_ to have a sister any more."  
His mind catching up with his sudden outburst, he recoiled visibly, cringing at himself.  
"I- I mean-"  
"I think you should see her," Larxene admitted quietly. Marluxia shook his head.  
"I _can't_."  
"Why not?" Larxene challenged. "Why not? You got better, Marluxia, don't you think she deserves to know that?"  
"I don't deserve for her to know," Marluxia replied, his voice sounding thick and choked. He stood from the bed, scrambling over to the door. When Larxene followed he spun back and snapped - "Don't follow me!" and stormed away, out into the pouring night.

---

Marluxia had never felt so alone before. His whole life since he was eleven, people had known where he was, and even after he'd moved out with Vexen it was the same - he was either at home with Vexen, or at home without Vexen, at school or walking purposefully _to_ school, or out with Larxene. Either way, Vexen always knew where he was. He fumbled with the electronic tag around his wrist that he always, always wore. He'd cracked the code to unlock it months ago, but only now did he put it to use, snapping the thing off and dropping it into some streaming gutter before continuing his aimless march into the darkness. How long was he walking for? He didn't know, didn't know until he reached the college, walking right up to the cast iron gates at the entrance. It was the only place he knew; his feet had taken him there entirely of their own accord. For the longest moment, he was staring in through the unyielding bars at the buildings behind, until his mind made him the one trapped on the inside, unable to escape into the world of the free. He imagined he saw Vexen, hair blackened by the rain, smiling lightly like nothing was wrong, and there was Larxene with the same expression. And Naminé...  
He reached through between the bars as though to reach for the mirage, to take her hand and save himself from his past and conscience. Of course, his hand passed right through, and then there was nothing in the steady, driving rain, bar the occasional roar of a car driving past in what he felt to be a mockery of his situation.  
Sinking to his knees, his arm still pressed up to his shoulder through the gate, he felt tears swim up inside him and mingle with the rain. The rational side of his mind told him to go home, go back to where Larxene, a towel and a warming mug of hot chocolate was waiting. Fuck that, argued his deranged, insane side. Make the most of your freedom. You're going to hell, why not drag a hundred people down with you?  
But there was a third side, a little boy plagued by nightmares, fear and confusion, that glued him helplessly to the floor, unable to move even when the merciless cold soaked through his jeans, and the gravel dug painfully into his knees. He wondered, vaguely in the back of his mind, if Vexen was going to find him again like the saviour he was, or whether he'd blown his very last chance and this was it, he'd never escape again. And then he thought about Naminé, the beautiful little girl that he never thought he'd see again, and whether she'd ever forgive him the terrible things he'd done. He was less than convinced.

---

"Fuck."  
Larxene had been standing in the open doorway, watching Marluxia disappear and slowly becoming splattered by stray raindrops infiltrating the house, for a few minutes before she realised that Marluxia had just done the worst thing possible: he'd run off by himself.  
Not hesitating to fling her shoes or coat on, she grabbed the nearest set of keys to the apartment and flung herself out of the door, onto the metal staircase that led down to the ground and away where Marluxia had run. But he'd already turned a corner and disappeared. Swearing again, Larxene picked the most logical direction - the one leading to the park. As far as she knew, there were only three places where Marluxia would have gone; the park, the café where they often chatted, and the college. The park being the nearest (and dearest, Larxene thought sardonically), she set off at a run towards it.  
It was empty, gates locked closed at this time of night. Larxene still climbed over the hedge with a practised ease, calling out Marluxia's name as she ran past the playground, the field, the pond with the bridge across it, the fancy gardens next to the church - he wasn't there. She climbed over the wall that they often walked along on the way to and from college, and ran up that same route, still calling Marluxia's name.

---

Marluxia had been thinking, and that was a bad thing.  
_I'm a murderer,_ he thought as he watched the rain fall in waves across the eerily silent college. _I'm a murderer. What am I doing? I don't deserve this. I should be locked away. They should never have let me out._  
He felt like the two halves of his mind were battling for domination with each other, and the longer he stayed kneeling on the floor with ghosts of recollections crossing his mind, the stronger the urges to kill, main and destroy became. He caught himself thinking those things completely by accident, and every time he did he swore and cursed himself like his madness would simply disappear, and even stronger would grow the flame of doubt in his heart that one day he _wouldn't_ catch himself before it was too late, before there was blood in his hands and a body lying dead on the floor beside him.  
He imagined that he heard his name being called from faraway, like some memory that hadn't quite remembered to stay in the past, and he felt his precious fragments of sanity slip away like a fluttering butterfly's wings pinned down by the merciless, merciless rain.  
Clinging to his last shreds of rational thought like a lifeline, he climbed to his feet and began to walk.

---

Larxene reached the main gate of the school, panting, and there was nobody there. Here at midnight, the place looked wrong, like a freakish horror story - except this wasn't just a film with terrible acting and worse special effects, this was reality. Marluxia was alone, and angry, and Larxene found herself terrified at the realisation that she didn't know what he was going to do. Curl up into a corner and scream like he sometimes did at school? Knock on the door or some poor stranger, seeking help in his confused state of mind? Or, and Larxene felt horror fester in her stomach as her mind maliciously formed the word, kill? She imagined him, bent over some bloody corpse, _laughing_...  
The thought, morbid as it was, spurred her on. She picked up her pace again, down the stretch of housing that ran along the college, and turned the corner to the other entrance gate to the school. Nothing.  
"Fuck."  
Marluxia was, well and truly, gone. Larxene began to walk, trying to regain her breath, and debated what to do. She could call the police, or her parents, but what would she say? She half wished that she had Vexen's number, or that Marluxia had his own phone so that she could talk to him. There was only one place left to look, and that was the café. Larxene felt as though she was simply pulling at straws, but she had nowhere else to look so she diverted her course to the high street and began once again to jog, pulling out her phone as she did so.  
"Mum? Is that you? I have a problem. Yeah... it's Marluxia. He's disappeared."

---

The police station lights were still on, just one on duty police officer lounging at the desk, reading a newspaper with a cup of tea in one hand. When Marluxia stumbled in he didn't seem concerned enough, simply folding up the paper and walking over to where Marluxia had collapsed in one of the chairs, half panting, half sobbing.  
"Can I help you, sir?"  
"Lock me up," Marluxia demanded fiercely, swallowing thickly and running a hand through his sodden hair. "I'm a murderer. Nobody's safe unless I'm behind bars."  
"Is this some kind of joke?"  
Before Marluxia knew what he was doing he'd grabbed the officer's collar, easily pushing him up against the opposite wall.  
"No!" He screamed. "This is not a joke! I could kill you, _right now_, and I swear if I stop concentrating for a single second that's exactly what I'm going to do!"  
He realised that he was shaking, and dropped the officer from his toes, stumbling backwards.  
"Arrest me," He begged. "Tie me up, please. I can't trust myself."  
"I'm sorry, I can't do that without a valid reason," The officer said apologetically, and Marluxia hissed angrily.  
"I'm a murderer! I've _killed_ people, isn't that enough of a reason for you? I'm turning myself in. Just do the sensible thing and lock me away."  
The officer, for a moment, seemed at a loss as to what to do, but he soon collected himself to take a professional approach to the situation.  
"What's your name?"  
Marluxia dug out from the depths of his past a name that he'd been trying to forget about for a long time.  
"Marluxia," He said. "Marluxia Traverston."  
The officer tapped the name into his computer and frowned a little at the results.  
"There isn't a Marluxia Traverston." He stated blankly. Hearing his old name again, Marluxia found himself agitatedly biting his lip.  
"Try Carlisle."  
"Age?"  
"Eighteen."  
"And what are you turning yourself in for?"  
"Murder," Marluxia repeated as he fiddled with the hem of his sodden t-shirt.  
"Can you give me any more specifics?"  
Marluxia, battling a new wave of tears, shook his head. It was too painful to remember.  
"Follow me."  
The officer led him to one of the temporary cells in the police station and he obediently walked inside.  
"Wait here."  
The door clicked closed with a comforting familiarity, and as a dull sort of warmth began to fill Marluxia's bones, his mind began to clear. It was okay, he could control himself. He'd managed it this time, hadn't he? He just needed to get the officer to call Vexen who would take him home and everything would be okay again. He pulled off his soaking shirt, ringing it out onto the plain faux-tiled floor. Then he thought that maybe he should call Larxene instead; after all, Vexen was busy all night and if he fixed everything without his help he'd be ever so proud of himself. So when the officer returned with a collegue in tow, he straightened out and calmly requested a phone with which to make a call.

---

When Larxene had checked the café and still found no sign of Marluxia, she returned to Vexen's apartment - not there either - and then the railway station - nothing - before going back to the park for a more thorough search. Sora and Roxas, her identical twin brothers, joined her halfway through but it was to no avail that they checked every nook and cranny, screaming Marluxia's name into the depths of the early morning night. Eventually, even they had to admit that wherever Marluxia had run off to, it wasn't anywhere that they were going to find through logic and reasoning.  
"We should call the police," Roxas was saying as they stood around in the town centre, alone and looking lost, when Larxene's phone rang.  
"It's not a registered contact," She said as she picked up. "Hello?"  
"Larxene! It's me. Marluxia."  
"You! Where the fuck are you?! Do you know how long we've been-"  
"I'm at the police station," Marluxia interrupted. Larxene's stomach sank.  
"You didn't do anything, did you?" She asked, trying to stop her voice from wobbling. Oh God, what if Marluxia had hurt somebody? It would have been _her_ fault...  
"Oh, no, I just turned myself in," Marluxia said a little sheepishly. "Can you come and get me, please?"  
"You moron," Larxene muttered, by which she meant _Thank God you're okay_. "Why couldn't you just have gone home? What did you tell them?"  
"I think I told them I was a murderer or something," Marluxia said nervously and Larxene could easily tell from his tone of voice - he was _never_ nervous - that he was lying. She understood; if the officers suspected that he actually _was_ the murderer he'd accused himself of being, then they probably wouldn't let him go at all.  
"I'll be right over," She promised. "Do you want me to try to get hold of Vexen?"  
"No," Marluxia replied after considering this. "I'm fine. I don't want to bother him."  
"Okay."  
She hung up and turned to Roxas and Sora.  
"Right. Time for a trip to the police."


End file.
